


Light Through the Edge of a Mirror

by nyxocity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU Winchesters, Episode: s15e13 Destiny's Child, M/M, Missing Scene, Sibling Incest, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:33:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27776158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyxocity/pseuds/nyxocity
Summary: God discounted the AU Winchesters, but Sam realizes he shouldn't have. Because they would never kill each other. Not this Samuel and this Other Dean. Like the Sam and Dean of this world, they’re too deeply intertwined. They love each other too much, in all the ways they should and some they should never.
Relationships: AU Dean Winchester/AU Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 25
Kudos: 256





	Light Through the Edge of a Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> For Kelios. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy this ❤

Sam has seen his own face in the mirror a million times throughout his life. He’s seen it in his visions, in his dreams. He’s seen it at least half a dozen times, walking around outside his body on its own two legs. That has never failed to send slivers of ice into his heart, and right now is no different, that same feeling; intimate and alien all at once.

What he feels now is even more perilous, grasp on reality just a little too tenuous. This person, walking around wearing his face, _is_ him, for all intents and purposes. Another Sam Winchester from another reality, different in so many ways, but still, in all the ways that matter, probably even on a cellular level, the same person.

There but for the grace of God, he thinks, and then bites back a bitter chuckle. More like there _because_ of God, less the grace.

“Oh,” Samuel says in his almost proper way as he turns. “Sam. I didn’t see you.” His hands fall to tighten the towel at his waist and don’t quite rest there, perching at the edges like nervous birds.

Once, back when they’d been working Christmas case with the Pagan gods, Dean had agreed with the shopkeeper that had called Sam ‘fussy’. This guy--this version of Sam himself--seems to fit that description in a way Sam doesn’t feel he ever has.

Sam starts to apologize, words catching in his throat as he looks his mirror self up and down. His physique is similar; lean, muscular and well-cut. But he’s somehow even more slender, almost wiry.

He realizes then, that he’s staring, words still caught in his throat. He clears it with a brisk nod. “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to--” he gestures broadly with one hand, forgetting in the moment that he’s holding a mug of coffee, and it slips from his hand before he can catch it.

Samuel moves like mercury, agile and graceful as a cat, fingers curling around the mug and catching it several inches from the floor. Coffee leaps up inside the cup, a quick, molasses colored wave that falls back inside the rim, disaster averted, not a drop spilled.

Samuel’s shoulders stiffen again as he straightens, and that sudden grace disappears as if it had never been. 

“You should be more careful,” Samuel chastises, presenting the mug to Sam, handle turned outward.

“You’re fast,” Sam remarks, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

“Well yes,” Samuel replies, as if to say, ‘of course’. “Aren’t you?”

From someone else, the words could be a challenge, but from Samuel, they’re a genuine inquiry, like he expects no less of Sam than he does of himself.

Sam would like to think he’s that fast, but even on his best day he isn’t sure he could have caught that mug before it hit the floor. He reaches for the handle, fingers curling around the green-stained porcelain, and pauses as he spots the thread of silver scars criss-crossing Samuel’s breastbone. 

Samuel releases the mug, hand rising to his chest, fingers curling self-consciously at the marks etched into his skin. “I guess I wasn’t as fast as I could have been that time,” he says, voice low.

“It happens,” Sam says, drawing the mug close to his own chest and shrugging lightly. He has his own showcase of scars; the times he wasn’t fast enough or something caught him off guard, the times he was more worried about Dean’s safety than his own. “I have them, too.”

“It’s part of the job,” Samuel agrees, fingers sliding up into the wet strands of his hair and brushing it back from his face. It’s about the same length as Sam’s, Sam notes with surprise. Even now, Samuel is twisting back into a knot against the base of his neck, his former modesty seemingly forgotten--and why not? He’s speaking with himself, after all.

“There’s so much we can’t control,” Samuel adds, fingers patting down the small twist of hair against the nape of his neck. 

A heartbeat, and then another, and Sam feels a key turn in the lock of his mind with the weight of their eyes on each other. He thinks of his room, neat and orderly, research organized just so, the length of hair that falls around his face, the ages old remnants of a rebellion he’d never quite finished nor abandoned until it had just become part of him. 

So many things they can’t control.

He looks at Samuel’s hair lying just so against his neck, and thinks he understands. 

They both blink then, sound of footsteps padding down the hall to their right.

“Samuel!” Other Dean exclaims--Sam can tell it’s him just by the way he speaks, so different than his own brother; lighter, less gritty, absent of the weight Sam knows so well. 

“Did you use all the hot water?” Other Dean demands, as he turns the corner, and Sam sees that he’s appropriated a robe from somewhere in the depths of the bunker.

“Of course not,” Samuel replies, sounding huffy.

“Oh, good,” Other Dean says with a smile, and Samuel begins to move down the hall in the direction of their rooms, Other Dean passing him by.

It’s a moment, just the briefest of moments, but Sam sees it, as vivid as if it were in slow motion; Other Dean’s fingertips brushing the bare skin of Samuel’s hip, ghosting motion and slightest squeeze, there and gone so fast most people would never have noticed. The incline of Samuel’s head towards his brother with the touch, the faint smile that crosses his lips, their eyes never meeting. It’s a touch that speaks of years of familiar intimacy, so natural and comfortable that it’s almost ingrained.

They’re past each other, then, Other Dean closing the door to the shower behind him, Samuel disappearing inside the door to his room.

Sam stands there a moment longer, coffee cup held forgotten between both hands.  
  


*

Sam catches Other Dean in the weight room later, his body just as thick and muscular as _his_ Dean’s, different scars crossing the freckled expanse of his bare shoulders, a deep nick beneath the hollow of his throat that could have been fatal if it had been an inch higher. Dozens of marks that tell a story Sam knows all too well.

Sam pauses in the doorway, watching as this Dean strains, pushing the barbell up above his chest, moving it back, setting it to rest.

“Samuel,” Dean says, sitting up. His face lights up in the most beautiful smile, skin glowing with exertion and delight and…

Love. It’s love Sam sees, warmth and affection written in every line of Dean’s face, a light to answer Sam’s own--if he were Samuel, if this were his Dean. The catch of his tongue between his teeth, that look of momentary lust that Sam recognizes so well.

Lust and light that fades, smile drifting away like a cloud as this Dean realizes this Sam isn’t his Sam.

It tells him everything he needs to know.

*

They spend time in the weapons room, trading tips, and Sam is impressed by the scope of their knowledge. So many little things they know, the most minute details of hunting, and it’s strange, because Sam would have thought it would be easier for them. All that money at their disposal, he’d thought it would be like the British Men of Letters. So many easy weapons that they become toys; job so easy they could forget to care for the people they’re supposed to protect. 

But they love what they do, and they’re committed to it. They care, and they’re beyond capable; Other Dean cleaning his guns as naturally as if he were just breathing, Samuel imparting his obviously vast knowledge of lore. 

Sam smiles, pleased without understanding entirely why when he feints at Samuel with a weapon and finds his hand shoved aside, knife skittering across the floor.

“You’re testing me?” Samuel asks, like he’s mystified.

“Just keeping your reflexes sharp,” Sam says.

Not long after that, they both join Sam while he’s casting bullets, Samuel offering tips.

“Holy water,” Samuel tells him, holding an eyedropper above the metal of a bullet carefully. “You just put a few drops in the tip of the hollow point. Then, when you shoot the demon, it goes straight to their bloodstream. It burns them from the inside out.” 

Nearby, Other Dean sharpens a knife blade in silence, a look of smug pride cast his brother’s way.

Sam recognizes that look. He just never realized how transparent it was, before.  
  


*

Sam knows he has to leave with Dean soon. They have business that needs taking care of. But he can’t help wishing they had more time to spend with this other Sam and other Dean.

On his way to Dean’s room, Sam passes Samuel’s room, the sound of muffled moans and grunts reaching him from beyond the door.

He stops, surprised though he shouldn’t be; he knew this already. And yet he can’t bring himself to move away, caught by muffled words he can’t quite make out and the sounds of pleasure swallowed so deep he can barely hear them.

In all the times, in all the universes, he’d never really considered there would be other Sam’s and Dean’s like them.

He remembers the first time he’d kissed Dean, the sweet, heady heat of Dean’s tongue, strong and sure and so unlike the thundering of Dean’s heart through his ribcage, unsteady and overwhelmed, his brother carrying perfection through on sheer bravado like he had so many times, so many hunts before. The feel of Dean’s bare skin beneath his hands, tracing scars and musculature like a blind man discovering the texture of a painting, hungry and eager for every ridge, every smooth expanse. How it had been hot and clumsy, terrifying and somehow right, sensation like coming home when Dean had sunk deep inside him, mouths fused together, skin slippery with sweat, two halves of the same whole.

It hadn’t been the best, that first time, but later… oh later it had been every bit as mindblowingly perfect as the sex on the other side of the door sounds right now. A rhythm and a cadence made their own, songs written with fingers across each other’s skin. 

Sam closes his eyes, deep breath inhaled, fingers skating against the tiled wall of the hallway before they stop, fingertips holding, palm pressed behind to hold his weight, his memories.

It hits Sam then, colliding into him like a freight train, wheels turning, clicking.

They’d never kill each other; these two. This Samuel and this Other Dean. Like the Sam and Dean of this world, they’re too deeply intertwined. They love each other too much, in all the ways they should and some they should never. There would be no blade sliding into Sam’s gullet by an eager demon Dean, no Boy King snapping his brother’s neck with an incline of his head. No Lucifer possessing Sam’s body to set Dean aflame. 

All the stories Sam had seen play out in his visions, these two had never been part of them. Their story doesn’t end like the hundreds, thousands of others Chuck wrote out. Chuck had ended their world prematurely--maybe because he’d been bored, maybe because he knew these two would never play his game. 

But more likely, he’d dismissed them without even giving them a thought, like Sam himself had.

They’re easy to dismiss. Neat, fancy, almost hipster clothes, perfectly coiffed, fully funded hunters loved by their father, who is in turn loved and admired by them. And yet they’d lost their mother, too. They’d found their way to each other, hands fumbling against bare skin in the dark, the same way he and Dean had so many years ago. Found each other because there’d never been anyone else, Dad still alive or not. 

It means something that he and Dean have confounded Chuck, that they’ve defied his ending. But it means something more that they’re not the only ones. All the Sam’s and Dean’s across all the universes, and he’d thought they were the only ones bound by scars and love that cuts bone deep, written in marrow and steeped blood. Love present in the space between their breaths, spoken in the language of their hands and the things they never say. 

All those Sam’s and all those Dean’s, so many of them dead and lost. 

But not all of them.

There’s more than Sam and _his_ Dean, who would fight. More than just him and his Dean, who love each other more than even god could have ever intended. 

There’s comfort in that, like soft rain on the windowpane and warm blankets while it pours. 

These hunters, so unlike him and his brother, two sides of the same coin. 

They give him hope. They make him proud.

They make him believe he and Dean are going to win.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
